Nuke Site Converted Into Green Data Center 125
1sockchuck writes "If you had 100,000 servers, would you put them on top of a former nuclear fuel facility? One of the world's largest web hosts, 1&1 Internet, is building a new data center on a site in Hanau, Germany previously used by Siemens to produce mixed oxide rods made from enriched uranium and plutonium. The site has been cleaned up, and 1&1 is converting it into a 'green' data center powered by renewable energy and using free cooling to save on air conditioning costs."
Cleaned up? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oddly enough, TFA says nothing about the site being cleaned up.
"Free" Cooling very economical (Score:4, Interesting)
I've read quite a bit about this whole idea of free cooling, and as far as I've been able to conclude, the basic premise is that the replacement cost for failures very much outweighs the costs for cooling it properly.
If you realize that the last decade or so, most components can easilly be overclocked with proper cooling, and will function quite well in a wide range of temperatures, it's not hard to imagine that operating temperatures of anywhere between -10C and +40C are generally fine for most equipment.
The only thing that would be affected, in the sense of less cleaning of air, would be movable parts components, like harddisks, fans, etc.
With the prices on HDDs and the ease of use and availability of any sort of RAID configuration you can think of, the actual costs for replacing these parts when they fail, could very well be a fraction of the costs that would be required to make them function 'properly'.
All in all it seems an economically very viable option, with the added advantage of using a lot less energy overall.
Article's a little light on details (Score:3, Interesting)
Furthermore, while the air side economizer is a great idea (and more data centers should be using it), there is no description of what supplemental, mechanical cooling there will be in this facility. I can't honestly believe that there will never be a need for any cooling other than what mother nature is providing. Sure, geographically, it's bound to be cooler than say the southwest U.S. but there are still apt to be days in the summer where temperatures make it implausible to be on "economizer only".
Interference (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Stray residual gamma rays knocks more electrons out of circuit A than circuit B.
2) Resulting potential difference induces current.
3) Resutling current flips a bit.
4) Bit is saved on hard drive.
5) Data is corrupted.
7) ???
8) (Absence of) Profit!
whenever something goes wrong in the server room (Score:5, Interesting)
that is unexplained, i usually say something like "probably a stray cosmic ray"
for the technically inclined, this usually elicits a laugh
for the technically uninclined this usually elicits a stony face of seriousness
try this comment sometime, its win win. its a good litmus test for the level of technical acumen you are dealing with in someone
however, these guys can actually say this sort of thing with a straight face: "probably a stray gamma ray"
I seriously don't understand... (Score:3, Interesting)
I find it funny (Score:3, Interesting)
I would get this same reaction in my environmental engineering class concerning waste water treatment (gray to white not sewage to gray). Even though the engineering of the treatment plant was explained most of the students would not be willing to drink the water that came out of the facility even though it used RO or other methods that are used to purify water from natural sources. This makes absolutely no sense. Engineers who understand that all water is recycled anyway, and that there is no difference if it is done mechanically vs. naturally.
If as educated individuals we cannot sell ourselves on the safety of the procedures how do we ever expect the uneducated masses to accept them?
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So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's Sister?
Re:So what? Why is this a front page story? (Score:3, Interesting)
I still think an LSD lab [cnn.com] is a better use of a missile silo. God bless William Pickard, and all those who risk their freedom to enrich the lives of so many.
Re:whenever something goes wrong in the server roo (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, cosmic rays can and do cause errors. Muon flux where I live tends to be roughly one through your hand per second, and they're going a pretty hefty fraction of C. With memory size and transistors scaling further and further down, cosmic ray interference becomes a really big issue, which is why ECC is so important.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel1/16/6912/00278509.pdf?temp=x [ieee.org]
We're dealing with more delicate technology these days; It's only gotten worse since then.
Re:ECC (Score:2, Interesting)
That was my thought... soft errors in general may or may not be an actual problem worth considering (although I know lots of people research solutions, so somebody must believe in it)... but if you're on top of a site which probably still has active radiation, I'd think it would be a bigger issue.
Re:I find it funny (Score:3, Interesting)
Given a few more years, we could have done some serious irreversible harm
Seeing how ozone is produced by a reaction with UV, the more UV that is allowed to pass the ozone layer causes an increase in natural ozone production. So in essence this becomes a self balancing system (as most of the earth's systems). So the hole would come to a natural equilibrium.
I'm more concerned with the irrational fear associated with such things as the hole in the ozone. You think that it is gone? We have not heard much about it in the last 10 years cause it was of little concern; also, ozone is easy to produce. It would not be a problem (just expensive) to produce ozone and cart it to the upper atmosphere.
I find it great human arrogance to assume that we can to any large degree upset the natural balance of the earth to a level that it will not recover itself. Besides the only thing to lose is our existence should such a calamity be triggered. Myself, I'm not to concerned about that. I live a decent life and have nothing to fear concerning death.
But to run tests on water and find that it is cleaner then "normal" municipal sources and not trust it is absurd.
I do agree that often we implement technologies without thinking of the consequences, but the tree huggers are even worst about create radical idea to "save the planet" without thinking of long term consequences.
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Who is hotter? Ali or Ali's Sister?
Radioactivity 101 (Score:4, Interesting)
I recall that back in the old days when expensive ICs were packaged in ceramic and cheap ones in plastic, cheap memory was less prone to bit errors because some of the ceramics contained, as it turned out, significant amounts of radioactivity. Potassium, for instance, is noticeably radioactive in its natural state (one of its isotopes is unstable).
Given that the concrete won't be made from raw materials collected on site, nor will the aluminum and steel in the server racks, and that the only really common beta emitter (tritium) produces electrons with less energy than those in an old style CRT, your fears are groundless.
Re:One of the world's largest webhosts? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've used them as Schuland Partner AG when I was working in Germany, although the accounts were on Solaris at the time with few problems and hosted a number of personal sites on their shared hosting up until 2004 or 2005. My old comapny had a dedicated server with them and had a few problems. On paper they had (and still do) have the best price on dedicated server hosting when you compare between companies. But if anything goes wrong, you're screwed. We had a hard disk fail and tried to get it replaced. Meanwhile our customers were bitching at us because their site was down. I had warned the boss about this previously. We had to contact their tech support for something minor once before and we finally got ahold of someone in the dedicated server department that could actually speak english. (They do all their tech support out of the far east)
We ended up going elsewhere and when the next bill came in, the boss put a stop payment with American Express. He explained the reasoning that 1and1 had not lived up to a reasonable expectation of delivered service and AE agreed. 1and1 still sent it to collections. (It still never got paid as far as I know).
Their customer service is beyond useless and their control panel features are always lagging behind everyone else. I know about a year ago, they added "Click-n'build" application of common programs like Joomla, etc.. Kind of like Fanastico in Cpanel. Well, there's a catch, with their click and build you get their default config. Just try to add plug-ins or new themes....you can't.
Where I work now came across them when we were pricing out dedicated servers. I was pushing for Pair Networks, but the $350 vs. $99 a month kept the owner making me justify why one costs three time as much for arguably less services. At least on Paper. I've been using Pair Networks since 1998. They've always been expensive, but I've never had to wait more than 20 minutes for a problem to be fixed either. Especially in set up costs (we needed a few extra ports installed and Pair Networks only does managed servers. Want an extra Port installed, it's $50).
It's an argument that I initially lost. The guy is a small business owner and has started 2 other successful businesses, but he has never dealt in the technology world before where time kills. So we have a dedicated server at 1and1. So far no problems, and I have to say that things are a bit better than the last time I used them other than their software offerings are a bit out of date. Still, the ability to reimage and the off site back ups work. We back up nightly to the 1and1 FTP server and then back up to our internal back-up system every 2 hours. We can switch from the 1and1 dedicated system to the one in the office in less than 20 minutes and we've tested this just to make sure. I've been through the week long nightmare once before if a hard disk fails.
Now that we have enough clients that we know that the business is going to fly, I am now fighting the battle to get everything moved to Pair Networks when we launch the next version of our system. He's since read a few reviews of 1and1 and has come to realize that they can't be trusted.